Cruelty amid wealth of Saratoga Springs

By Chris Churchill

Updated 10:23 pm, Wednesday, December 25, 2013

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A man only identified as Jeff leaves the Presbyterian-New England Congregation Church Dec. 19, 2013, as he mourns the loss of his friend Nancy Pitts who was found frozen to death outside the Saratoga Senior Citizens building in Saratoga Springs. (Skip Dickstein / Times Union) less

A man only identified as Jeff leaves the Presbyterian-New England Congregation Church Dec. 19, 2013, as he mourns the loss of his friend Nancy Pitts who was found frozen to death outside the Saratoga Senior ... more

Cruelty amid wealth of Saratoga Springs

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Saratoga Springs

Earlier this month, Pope Francis asked this question: "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly person dies of exposure, but it is a news item when the stock market loses two points?"

The pope, I'm happy to say, was wrong — at least around here.

We learned the hard way that it is actually news in the Capital Region when somebody dies in the cold. The death of 54-year-old Nancy Pitts on the icy streets of Saratoga Springs has received the attention such a tragedy deserves.

But Pope Francis was making a broader point, of course, one he has made often since his election. He was calling out the world's unseemly obsession with material wealth. He was reminding us to remember and make room for the poor and homeless.

Saratoga Springs hasn't done a good job of doing so.

An ongoing development boom has remade the city. Downtown is filled with new, high-priced condos. Broadway is a great place to shop, eat and spend money.

There's nothing wrong with any of that. Saratoga's success is a model for every urban center in the region.

But there is something deeply and horribly wrong when someone like Pitts has nowhere to turn in 10-degree weather, when the safety net in the region's most upscale city has such gaping holes.

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With a thriving economy that makes it an upstate outlier, Saratoga has nurtured and attracted the wealthy — but the city has done too little for those living in its shadows.

"It is hard when someone unsheltered passes away because not quite enough has been done," Coqui Conkey, a pastor, said at the emotional memorial service held last week for Pitts.

There were signs that the city needed to do more, but the warnings went unheeded.

Earlier this year, for example, I wrote about how Saratoga officials were tightening security at City Hall because the homeless were sneaking into the building on cold nights to curl up in its hidden corners.

"It's just to get out of the weather," Public Works Commissioner Skip Scirocco told me in March. "You can't blame them."

No, you certainly can't. But homeless people sleeping in City Hall made one fact abundantly clear: They had nowhere else to go.

Shelters of Saratoga, the city's only homeless facility, operates at nearly full capacity and frequently turns people away. What's more, it's not a shelter designed to help people like Pitts. It charges $10 a night and asks for $70 up front. It also mandates sobriety, and Pitts apparently struggled with alcohol.

"It's clearly not your classic emergency shelter," said Peter Whitten, the organization's executive director. "There is a need in this community for a shelter with unrestricted access."

Pitts was homeless, but Saratoga Springs was her home. She grew up in the city and no doubt understood it better than wealthier residents ever could. She knew its warmth and kindness, but also its cold and cruelty.

It's that cruelty, amid so much wealth, that Pope Francis has made his focus.

"A globalization of indifference has developed," he wrote last month in his first apostolic exhortation. "Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor."

The pope would be pleased, I think, that Saratoga Springs has quickly responded to Pitts' death. The city has mobilized to prevent similar tragedies — and did so without needing a government vote or penny of public spending.

Just eight days after Pitts died, Mayor-elect Joanne Yepsen and others were announcing a program that would provide the homeless with a warm place to sleep on especially cold nights. On Tuesday afternoon, Saratoga officials were preparing for their first Code Blue night.

It was perfect that the program would launch on Christmas Eve. The story of the holiday, after all, is about the search for shelter.

"Saratoga Springs has people living on the streets, too," Yepsen told me. "We can't pretend we don't have people in need."